Contributed by Susan Bee / The early paintings of Marc Chagall are a recent inspiration. It’s a strange turn. For years I thought I disliked his work, especially the late paintings: too saccharine and repetitious. But I became enamored by his early efforts when I saw Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-Garde in Vitebsk, 1918–1922, … read more… “Anywhere Out of the World: Chagall and me”
Catalogue essay: Abstract Art Does Not Stop an Hour
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / The works in “Uncharted: American Abstraction in the Information Age” are, for whatever their reliance on what we call “technology,” first and foremost abstract art. To allow ourselves to be distracted by any “Wow!” factor that might lurk in some of them because they employ modern technology, or to be … read more… “Catalogue essay: Abstract Art Does Not Stop an Hour”
Carolyn Case: Build battle sink
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower… –William Blake Contributed by Andrew Woolbright / Carolyn Case has mounted a colorful swarm of pastels and paintings in her third solo show with Asya Geisberg Gallery, “Before It Sinks In.” The title is a wry double entendre on … read more… “Carolyn Case: Build battle sink”
Jude Tallichet’s sense of the ineffable
Contributed by Adam Simon / Jude Tallichet’s Fire Escape, one of several sculptures in her exhibition ”Heat Map” at Smack Mellon in Dumbo, doesn’t look like something that would help if your building were burning down. It hangs there in all its ineffectuality, abject yet amiable, enormous and out of place (except that nothing is … read more… “Jude Tallichet’s sense of the ineffable”
A conversation: Becky Yazdan and Zachary Keeting
Abstract painter Becky Yazdan, who earned her MFA at the NY Studio School studying with painters Bill Jensen and Graham Nickson, recently had a solo show at Fred Giampietro in New Haven. Zachary Keeting met her at the show, where they talked about painting, narrative abstraction, the relationship of art to life, and how her … read more… “A conversation: Becky Yazdan and Zachary Keeting”
Robin Hill’s acts of unnaming
Contributed by Elizabeth Whalley / In a genre-defying practice, Robin Hill queries the nature of her sensory entanglements with the everyday world. Embracing a vast array of materials, playing with scale and dimensions, blurring modes of expression, she transforms her spontaneous encounters with substances and objects into mystifying, unnameable objects. Hill is a New York-based … read more… “Robin Hill’s acts of unnaming”
Art and Film: Kelly Reichardt’s eye for grace
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / In the 1820s, not long after Lewis and Clark blazed the Oregon Trail, Otis “Cookie” Figowitz, a white orphan from Maryland who had been indentured to a Boston baker and is now a cook, and King-Lu, an itinerant Chinese dreamer on the run, are en route to Fort Tillicum, a … read more… “Art and Film: Kelly Reichardt’s eye for grace”
Selected paintings from SPRING/BREAK NYC
Contributed by Fay Sanders / In its ninth year, SPRING/BREAK continues its tradition of turning mundane office spaces into elaborate and vibrant venues for art. This year more than 100 curators and 400+ artists took over two floors of the former Ralph Lauren offices on Madison Avenue to present their respective takes on this year’s … read more… “Selected paintings from SPRING/BREAK NYC”
Moira Dryer: Satisfyingly complete
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / Moira Dryer (b. 1957; d. 1992) was among the first painters in the 1980s and ’90s to reject minimalism and conceptualism and open things up for painting after what had seemed, to many critics and theorists, to be its endgame. These artists reintroduced references to life and experience, proudly showed … read more… “Moira Dryer: Satisfyingly complete”
Leslie Wayne: 2020 Armory report
Contributed by Leslie Wayne / How do you look at art at an art fair? Do you do a quick pass through the whole thing and then go back to the works that caught your eye in order to look at them more closely? Or do you settle in for six hours and go slowly … read more… “Leslie Wayne: 2020 Armory report”